LIHTC Research Help

Interested in Researching LIHTC Policies?

Qualified Allocation Plans (QAPs) and Compliance Manuals (CMs) are critical documents in LIHTC. Together, they show the priorities, detail the policies, and let everyone know what is expected in operating LIHTC properties. These documents are different for every state and the QAPs often change every year.

The documents are almost universally PDF files, which, depending on how they are created, may not be easily searchable individually. There is no centralized, searchable repository of these documents that govern the largest housing program in the United States. While there have been periodic, large research projects examining all of the QAPs for a particular issue in a specific year, generally, doing this kind of analysis has been time and cost prohibitive.

Most often, research involves emailing a listserv or talking to contacts at specific agencies to ask them what they know. While this can produce very good information, it is necessarily incomplete. It also isn't suited to address questions about national trends over time.

Rachel Blake of Regional Housing Legal Services has spent several years working to develop systems to more easily and efficiently analyze the content of Qualified Allocation Plans (QAPs) and Compliance Manuals (CMs) -- and to be able to more easily extract and share model language. While that work is ongoing, RHLS has made major strides in turning this nearly impossible problem into one that is manageable. RHLS is open to working with organizations that are interested in doing large scale QAP/CM research projects. For more information, fill out our contact form.